Is brownfield site house-building the answer?

The report, ‘Making More Brownfield Land Available for Housing’ uses Nottingham as a representative case study of major cities in England outside of London. Through a detailed analysis of 30 brownfield sites, the report reveals several significant constraints which impact upon brownfield site housing development and delivery. According to RICS, these constraints must be addressed, stating that:

• We must be clear in order to create the places people want to live and raise families and we must have a coherent approach to developing on brownfield that involves communities and sets standards for categorizing land for use which can form a national brownfield map for viable housing delivery.
• Collaboration across both public and private sectors to lower barriers and streamline the housing delivery process is vital if we are to deliver the number of homes that UK brownfield has the potential to deliver.
• VAT on brownfield needs to be cut or a remediation fund set up. The research proves that Nottingham can be used as a canary in the coal mine for brownfield land in similar sized cities across England.
• According to the Office of National Statistics, there are 49 cities with a comparable population size giving enough brownfield land across the UK to build at least 226,000 houses by 2019.
• The report highlights that, at the local level, there are clear options that can be promoted to help reduce delay, ease planning issues and cost and to encourage developers to bring forward schemes when the market allows.

The RICS makes six recommendations:

1. Make pre-planning application meetings obligatory
2. Allocate adequate resource for the Town and Country Planning System
3. Create Developer packs for Large and/or Sensitive Development Sites
4. Restrict the use of S106
5. Streamline the bid application process
6. Make the process of match funding much easier.

The RICS ‘Property in Politics Report’, published in Autumn 2014, found that local growth is impeded by blockages to the development pipeline across much of the UK and that to attract investment, we need to signal that we have a future pipeline of land and a new planning class between green and brown to showcase sites ready for development.

Sources: www.rics.org.uk (Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors Press Release: 2015/04/14)